I am a high school teacher in Missouri, and I am using this blog to publish some of the poems and short stories I am composing. Most of the compositions are based on people I have known and things I have experienced in my hometown.

Joshua Sutherland Allen

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Tom White, Part VI

This is the final installment of a story based on my great-grandfather's life.

The
attending physician did not take long with Tom.It was obvious that he would need some sort of major operation.The attending simply took a cursory look and
then called for the surgeon.

Tom
would need surgery to repair his broken arm and his broken right leg.He would need skin grafts on both legs.

An
orderly wheeled Tom into the pre-op room.The on-call anesthesiologist arrived to administer the sedative and
general anesthesia.

Tom
yelled, “I have told you shit-head people that I don’t want no damn sedative!”

The
anesthesiologist calmly replied, “Well, Mr. White, I do recommend the general,
but if the surgeon is okay with it we could just administer a local…”

“Goddamn
it!” Tom shouted.“I don’t need no pain
stuff!I’ll by God do this on my own!”

The
anesthesiologist, two nurses, and an orderly tried to argue with him, but they
got nowhere.When Tom White had made up
his mind, some scrub-clad hospital employees would not be able change it.Tom was determined to face his surgery
without any kind of numbing drug.

Dr.
John Roper, the surgeon on call, had finished scrubbing up and preparing for
the operation, and he walked into the room as the staff was debating with Tom
the need for general anesthesia.

Dr.
Roper was a portly middle-aged man with an unfortunate balding pattern on his
scalp.Instead of thinning in a uniform,
dignified manner, his hair appeared as if it had retreated in piecemeal
fashion, with various patches making valiant stands on asymmetrical sections of
his head.His appearance did not inspire
confidence.However, his experience in
the operating room with unusual patients was extensive.

The
surgeon grabbed the anesthesiologist by the arm, pulled him aside, and asked,
“What’s going on?”

“This
one won’t take the sedative,” the anesthesiologist said.“Says he doesn’t need any pain killer.”

Dr.
Roper sighed.“Okay,” he said.

He
turned to the patient. “Mr. White, I’m
Dr. Roper.I will be doing your
surgeries today.I understand you are
refusing pain medication?”

“Damn
straight,” Tom said.“Don’t need any of
that shit.”

“Okay,”
Dr. Roper said.“That’s fine with
me.Let’s get started.”

Dr.
Roper took his place at Tom’s right side and called for a scalpel.

“Just
to warn you, Mr. White, this will hurt quite a bit.”

“I
can take it,” Tom said.

For
a couple of seconds, Dr. Roper hovered his scalpel above Tom’s right leg.Then he started cutting.

“Wait,
wait, wait!” Tom cried.

“What’s
wrong, Mr. White?” Dr. Roper asked.

“Uh….maybe…uh….maybe
I will let you put me to sleep after all.”

For
only the second time in his life, Tom had been out-willed by someone.

A
few hours later, young Tom White and his wife, Betty, were waiting in the
hospital family room.Dr. Roper stepped
into the room, still wearing his garments from surgery.

“Mr.
White?I’m Dr. Roper, the surgeon.I do have some good news for you.Your father came through the surgery just
fine.We were able to successfully
complete the skin grafts, and we set all the broken bones.He is in recovery right now, but you can see
him as soon as he has come to.”

Young
Tom exhaled deeply.“Okay, thanks,
doctor.Is there anything I need to do,
or anything I need to know?”

“Well…I
was just getting to that,” Dr. Roper said.He had given bad news countless times in his career, but he never found
it to get more enjoyable as time went on.

He said, “Mr. White, the leg wounds
were very severe.At his age, they are
going to be very difficult to recover from.It might be impossible.I can’t
say for sure, but from what I have seen today, I don’t think your father will
ever walk again.”

Young Thomas Robert White
laughed.It was the deepest, most
carefree, most absurd laugh Dr. Roper had ever heard.This man was laughing the laugh of a person
whose weightiest burdens had just been lifted from his shoulders – the laugh of
a person who had just heard the funniest, most ridiculous story that could
possibly be imagined.It was the laugh,
Dr. Roper thought, of a man who was losing his mind.

For a second Dr. Roper was
mortified.He looked at the man in front
of him who was wearing a steel brace on his left leg and limping around the
room.Obviously a polio victim.Maybe the remark about not being able to
walk…

“Mr. White, I’m not sure I
understand…”

Young Tom tried to calm himself down
enough to talk, but it was another minute or two before he could get any words
to come out.He was laughing so hard
that his eyes were squeezing tears out from between his tightly clinched
eyelids.

“I’m sorry, doctor,” Tom said when
he had calmed down enough to talk.“You
don’t understand.”Here he started
laughing again.“You said that he
wouldn’t ever walk again.That just
shows me that you don’t know my old man.You just tell him that he won’t ever walk again.He’ll walk out of here this afternoon just to
spite you!”

It did not happen that
afternoon.But three weeks later, old
Thomas N. White – the veteran of the trenches of France, the strong-bodied
teamster and railroad wrecker, the stubborn son of Missouri farmers, the man
with a will the strength of iron – walked out of the Poplar Bluff Hospital
under his own power.

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About Me

I am a high school music teacher in rural Missouri. I am using this blog to publish stories and poems that I am writing. Many of them are about my family or about my experiences in small towns in southern Missouri.